Whatever his merits (of lack of same) Jean Claude Juncker is now President of the European Union- and David Cameron has only HIMSELF to blame for it!

Firstly it must have been obvious even without hindsight that Mr Cameron's hectoring shrillness would turn off even conservative allies in his attempt to block Juncker's candidacy. What is known in the trade as the "Violet Rose" school of diplomacy( Violet Rose is a character in Richmal Crompton's "Just William" series of books who whenever she didn't get her own way, just threatened to "scweam and scweam the whole house down" until everyone else submitted to her wishes) was never likely to bring home the diplomatic bacon.

Secondly it validates my long held view that those politicians who for narrow political expediency play with the fires of religious, racial and ideological extremism( as the US Republicans did with the Tea Party in the run up to the 2012 Presidential elections) usually end up getting deservedly burned by them!

Pace Barack Obama's comfortable reelection that year!)

Cameron COULD have taken the moral high road and said "Look, whatever problems we have with the EU, talk of withdrawal is just plain foolishness- to quote Conservative peer Chris Patten- a man or woman in the middle of the Sahara(or was it Gobi) Desert, naked, starving and alone, is sovereign- and doomed!" but instead he chose to toss as much red meat in the direction of UKIP and his own Eurosceptics , ignoring Churchill's diction that the best way to appease a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.

Even had Cameron "won" his battle to block Juncker, the Eurosceptics would have found some other issue to oppose the EU on. Rafael Lemkin once noted that when you dislike mustard on principle, you can always find some other issue to oppose it when the other one was debunked- for"mustard" read the "EU" for Eurosceptics(whether Tory or UKIP, Left as well as Right).

Ignoring Clement Attlee's aphorism that referendums are the favoured tools of both demagogues and dictators, Cameron is STILL pressing on with his hare-brained scheme for an "in/out" referendum on the EU in 2017- despite the fact that he may not be PM by then!

Anybody else think as I do?

Terry